so... it took us about 5 hours to get to where we were staying from kamata, tokyo. we are sooo close to the airport but quite a way from everything else - which sucks a bit! it is alot quieter than tokyo but its really nice. our hotel is pretty good and the dinning area is awesome - you sit on the floor to eat and they have the japanese style shutters at reception

the day after we got here and found our bearings we went to Namba in the afternoon to look for a british bar we had seen on the internet (to see if the football would be on) what should have taken us 1 and a half hours took us almost 3 as there was soooo much drama with our railpasses - but we finally made it to namba and had a look around, its a really busy place, we felt we were back in tokyo haha. we looked for somewhere to eat and came across an australian bar which was awesome - it is called blue billabong cafe studio, it was very australian with surfing pictures all over and some documentary on a flat screen tv about kangaroos!! dinner was yummy we went down to the first floor and was about to have a drink in the bar when the guy told us about the british pub, called the pig in whistle - we headed down the street to look for it, when we got there (exactly like spinning wheel - love it) morgan finally got a pint of guiness and sj finally got a pint of cider woop! we then found out they shut at midnight therefore wouldn`t be showing the game however...... morgan managed to watch it at 4 in the morning on our hotel tv - and man united won wooooooooohooooooooooooooooooooooo

The next day we decided to go and see Osaka castle. Osaka castle was built in 1583 and was built by hideyoshi toyotomi to unify japan, it was really similar to the imperial palace we visited in tokyo but we were actually allowed to go in, it was a beautiful day and strolling around the castle grounds was lovely! we started on the 8th floor (right at the top) and worked our way down through the castles museum. when we were on the 8th floor (observatory floor) we could see the whole of the castle grounds and much more - it was a little windy so high up but was amazing!

just before we went into the castle we had a bit of a random encounter with some school kids - about 5 of them ran over to us and wanted there picture taken with us haha after we had our photo taken they gave us an a3 drawing of japan and asked to come visit them in tokushima, on the drawing there was pictures and writing about there town

Yesterday we decided to head to kyoto for a couple of hours (there is sooo much to do there that we will do it on a number of occasions, it also takes us quite a while to get there) we still havent seen any geisha yet but we did go inside our first temple though... higashi hongan-ji temple, this was cool - we had to take our shoes off, when we walked in there were people praying so we had to be very queit and wernt allowed to take pictures. within the temple we saw this massive rope which we found out was made of hair and helped with some of the temples structure - crazy!!! apparently at the time it was stronger than rope!!

we then walked for aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaages.... to find that the next temple (nishi hongan-ji temple) we wanted to see was under construction and was closed, however we did get to walk around the side of it and it was a lovely sunny day, as we were doing this we saw ryokoku university - this was bulit in 1877 and was one of the first western style buildings at the time.

on our way back to kyoto station we decided to take a look at kyoto tower, it is on top of a hotel it wasnt anything special so decided not to go up it.

today it is chucking it down so we might just book our tickets to hiromisha, nara and kobe - hopefully the weather will brighten up again

hope all is good with everyone... we miss you xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx